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RICK RIORDAN
PUFFIN
Contents
About Rick Riordan
Books by Rick Riordan
Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief
Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters
Percy Jackson and the Titan’s Curse
Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrinth
Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian
Rick Riordan is the creator of the award-winning, bestselling Percy Jackson series and the thrilling Kane Chronicles series. According to Rick, the idea for the Percy Jackson stories was inspired by his son Haley. But rumour has it that Camp Half-Blood actually exists, and Rick spends his summers there recording the adventures of young demigods. Some believe that, to avoid a mass panic among the mortal population, he was forced to swear on the River Styx to present Percy Jackson’s story as fiction. Rick lives in Boston (apart from his summers on Half-Blood Hill) with his wife and two sons. To learn more about him and the Percy Jackson and Kane Chronicles series, visit: www.rickriordanmythmaster.co.uk
Books by Rick Riordan
The Percy Jackson series:
PERCY JACKSON AND THE LIGHTNING THIEF
PERCY JACKSON AND THE SEA OF MONSTERS
PERCY JACKSON AND THE TITAN’S CURSE
PERCY JACKSON AND THE BATTLE OF THE LABYRINTH
PERCY JACKSON AND THE LAST OLYMPIAN
PERCY JACKSON: THE DEMIGOD FILES
For more about Percy Jackson try:
PERCY JACKSON: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE
The Heroes of Olympus series:
THE LOST HERO
THE SON OF NEPTUNE
THE MARK OF ATHENA
HEROES OF OLYMPUS: THE DEMIGOD DIARIES
Don’t miss:
THE HOUSE OF HADES
The Kane Chronicles series:
THE RED PYRAMID
THE THRONE OF FIRE
THE SERPENT’S SHADOW
A Carter Kane/Percy Jackson Adventure ebook:
THE SON OF SOBEK
www.rickriordanmythmaster.co.uk
Praise for the Percy Jackson series:
‘A fantastic blend of myth and modern. Rick Riordan takes the reader back to the stories we love, then shakes the cobwebs out of them’
– Eoin Colfer, author of Artemis Fowl
‘Funny . . . very exciting . . . but it’s the storytelling that will; get readers hooked. After all, this is the stuff of legends’
– Guardian
‘Riordan delivers puns, jokes and subtle wit, alongside a gripping storyline’
– Sunday Telegraph
‘Witty and inspired. Gripping, touching and deliciously satirical’
– Amanda Craig, The Times
‘One of the books of the year … vastly entertaining’
– Independent
‘It’s Buffy meets Artemis Fowl. Thumbs up’
– Sunday Times
‘Sure to become a classic’
– Sunday Express
‘Funny, clever and exciting’
– The Times
‘Cool, mad and very funny!’
– Flipside
‘Unputdownable’
– Irish Times
RICK RIORDAN
PUFFIN
Contents
1 • I Accidentally Vaporize My Maths Teacher
2 • Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death
3 • Grover Unexpectedly Loses His Trousers
4 • My Mother Teaches Me Bullfighting
5 • I Play Pinochle with a Horse
6 • I Become Supreme Lord of the Bathroom
7 • My Dinner Goes Up in Smoke
8 • We Capture a Flag
9 • I Am Offered a Quest
10 • I Ruin a Perfectly Good Bus
11 • We Visit the Garden Gnome Emporium
12 • We Get Advice from a Poodle
13 • I Plunge to My Death
14 • I Become a Known Fugitive
15 • A God Buys Us Cheeseburgers
16 • We Take a Zebra to Vegas
17 • We Shop for Waterbeds
18 • Annabeth Does Obedience School
19 • We Find Out the Truth, Sort Of
20 • I Battle My Jerk Relative
21 • I Settle My Tab
22 • The Prophecy Comes True
To Haley, who heard the story first
1 I Accidentally Vaporize My Maths Teacher
Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood.
If you’re reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now. Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.
Being a half-blood is dangerous. It’s scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways.
If you’re a normal kid, reading this because you think it’s fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened.
But if you recognize yourself in these pages – if you feel something stirring inside – stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it’s only a matter of time before they sense it too, and they’ll come for you.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
My name is Percy Jackson.
I’m twelve years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.
Am I a troubled kid?
Yeah. You could say that.
I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan – twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.
I know – it sounds like torture. Most Yancy field trips were.
But Mr Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had hopes.
Mr Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn’t think he’d be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armour and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn’t put me to sleep.
I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn’t get in trouble.
Boy, was I wrong.
See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn’t aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway. And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. And the time before that… Well, you get the idea.
This trip, I was determined to be good.
All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly red-headed kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend, Grover, in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.
Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must’ve been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled. He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don’t let that fool you. You should’ve seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.
Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn’t do anything back to her because I was already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me with death-by-in-school-suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.
‘I’m going to kill her,’ I mumbled.
Grover tried to calm me down. ‘It’s okay. I like peanut butter.’
He dodged another piece of Nancy’s lunch.
‘That’s it.’ I started to get up, but Grover pulled me back to my seat.
‘You’re already on probation,’ he reminded me. ‘You know who’ll get blamed if anything happens.’
Looking back on it, I wish I’d decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there. In-school suspension would’ve been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get myself into.
Mr Brunner led the museum tour.
He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery.
It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.
He gathered us around a four-metre-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs Dodds, would give me the evil eye.
Mrs Dodds was this little maths teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last maths teacher had a nervous breakdown.
From her first day, Mrs Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say, ‘Now, honey,’ real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month.
One time, after she’d made me erase answers out of old maths workbooks until midnight, I told Grover I didn’t think Mrs Dodds was human. He looked at me real serious and said, ‘You’re absolutely right.’
Mr Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.
Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turned around and said, ‘Will you shut up?’
It came out louder than I meant it to.
The whole group laughed. Mr Brunner stopped his story.
‘Mr Jackson,’ he said, ‘did you have a comment?’
My face was totally red. I said, ‘No, sir.’
Mr Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. ‘Perhaps you’ll tell us what this picture represents?’
I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I actually recognized it. ‘That’s Kronos eating his kids, right?’
‘Yes,’ Mr Brunner said, obviously not satisfied. ‘And he did this because…’
‘Well…’ I racked my brain to remember. ‘Kronos was the king god, and –’
‘God?’ Mr Brunner asked.
‘Titan,’ I corrected myself. ‘And… he didn’t trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters –’
‘Eeew!’ said one of the girls behind me.
‘– and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans,’ I continued, ‘and the gods won.’
Some snickers from the group.
Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, ‘Like we’re going to use this in real life. Like it’s going to say on our job applications, “Please explain why Kronos ate his kids”.’
‘And why, Mr Jackson,’ Brunner said, ‘to paraphrase Miss Bobofit’s excellent question, does this matter in real life?’
‘Busted,’ Grover muttered.
‘Shut up,’ Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair.
At least Nancy got in trouble, too. Mr Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.
I thought about his question, and shrugged. ‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘I see.’ Mr Brunner looked disappointed. ‘Well, half credit, Mr Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan’s stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it’s time for lunch. Mrs Dodds, would you lead us back outside?’
The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses.
Grover and I were about to follow when Mr Brunner said, ‘Mr Jackson.’
I knew that was coming.
I told Grover to keep going. Then I turned towards Mr Brunner. ‘Sir?’
Mr Brunner had this look that wouldn’t let you go – intense brown eyes that could’ve been a thousand years old and had seen everything.
‘You must learn the answer to my question,’ Mr Brunner told me.
‘About the Titans?’
‘About real life. And how your studies apply to it.’
‘Oh.’
‘What you learn from me,’ he said, ‘is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson.’
I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed me so hard.
I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armour and shouted: ‘What ho!’ and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever lived, and their mother, and what god they worshipped. But Mr Brunner expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C- in my life. No – he didn’t expect me to be as good; he expected me to be better. And I just couldn’t learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.
I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he’d been at this girl’s funeral.
He told me to go outside and eat my lunch.
The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.
Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I’d ever seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York state had been weird since Christmas. We’d had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn’t have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.
Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady’s bag, and, of course, Mrs Dodds wasn’t seeing a thing.
Grover and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn’t know we were from that school – the school for loser freaks who couldn’t make it elsewhere.
‘Detention?’ Grover asked.
‘Nah,’ I said. ‘Not from Brunner. I just wish he’d lay off me sometimes. I mean – I’m not a genius.’
Grover didn’t say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he said, ‘Can I have your apple?’
I didn’t have much of an appetite, so I let him take it.
I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mom’s apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn’t seen her since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. She’d hug me and be glad to see me, but she’d be disappointed, too. She’d send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn’t be able to stand that sad look she’d give me.
Mr Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized café table.
I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of me with her ugly friends – I guess she’d gotten tired of stealing from the tourists – and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover’s lap.
‘Oops.’ She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.
I tried to stay cool. The school counsellor had told me a million times, ‘Count to ten, get control of your temper.’ But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears.
I don’t remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, ‘Percy pushed me!’
Mrs Dodds materialized next to us.
Some of the kids were whispering: ‘Did you see –’
‘– the water –’
‘– like it grabbed her –’
I didn’t know what they were talking about. All I knew was that I was in trouble again.
As soon as Mrs Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs Dodds turned on me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if I’d done something she’d been waiting for all semester. ‘Now, honey –’
‘I know,’ I grumbled. ‘A month erasing textbooks.’
That wasn’t the right thing to say.
‘Come with me,’ Mrs Dodds said.
‘Wait!’ Grover yelped. ‘It was me. I pushed her.’
I stared at him, stunned. I couldn’t believe he was trying to cover for me. Mrs Dodds scared Grover to death.
She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.
‘I don’t think so, Mr Underwood,’ she said.
‘But –’
‘You – will– stay – here.’
Grover looked at me desperately.
‘It’s okay, man,’ I told him. ‘Thanks for trying.’
‘Honey,’ Mrs Dodds barked at me. ‘Now.’
Nancy Bobofit smirked.
I gave her my deluxe I’ll-kill-you-later stare. I then turned to face Mrs Dodds, but she wasn’t there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.
How’d she get there so fast?
I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I’ve missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counsellor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.
I wasn’t so sure.
I went after Mrs Dodds.
Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between me and Mr Brunner, like he wanted Mr Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr Brunner was absorbed in his novel.
I looked back up. Mrs Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.
Okay, I thought. She’s going to make me buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop.
But apparently that wasn’t the plan.
I followed her deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section.
Except for us, the gallery was empty.
Mrs Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.
Even without the noise, I would’ve been nervous. It’s weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it…
‘You’ve been giving us problems, honey,’ she said.
I did the safe thing. I said, ‘Yes, ma’am.’
She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. ‘Did you really think you would get away with it?’
The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.
She’s a teacher, I thought nervously. It’s not like she’s going to hurt me.
I said, ‘I’ll – I’ll try harder, ma’am.’
Thunder shook the building.
‘We are not fools, Percy Jackson,’ Mrs Dodds said. ‘It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain.’
I didn’t know what she was talking about.
All I could think of was that the teachers must’ve found the illegal stash of candy I’d been selling out of my dorm room. Or maybe they’d realized I got my essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.
‘Well?’ she demanded.
‘Ma’am, I don’t…’
‘Your time is up,’ she hissed. Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn’t human. She was a shrivelled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me to ribbons.
Then things got even stranger.
Mr Brunner, who’d been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand.
‘What ho, Percy!’ he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.
Mrs Dodds lunged at me.
With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn’t a pen any more. It was a sword – Mr Brunner’s bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.
Mrs Dodds spun towards me with a murderous look in her eyes.
My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword.
She snarled, ‘Die, honey!’
And she flew straight at me.
Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword.
The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water. Hisss!
Mrs Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulphur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.
I was alone.
There was a ballpoint pen in my hand.
Mr Brunner wasn’t there. Nobody was there but me.
My hands were still trembling. My lunch must’ve been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.
Had I imagined the whole thing?
I went back outside.
It had started to rain.
Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw me, she said, ‘I hope Mrs Kerr whipped your butt.’
I said, ‘Who?’
‘Our teacher. Duh!’
I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs Kerr. I asked Nancy what she was talking about.
She just rolled her eyes and turned away.
I asked Grover where Mrs Dodds was.
He said, ‘Who?’
But he paused first, and he wouldn’t look at me, so I thought he was messing with me.
‘Not funny, man,’ I told him. ‘This is serious.’
Thunder boomed overhead.
I saw Mr Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he’d never moved.
I went over to him.
He looked up, a little distracted. ‘Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr Jackson.’
I handed it over. I hadn’t even realized I was still holding it.
‘Sir,’ I said, ‘where’s Mrs Dodds?’
He stared at me blankly. ‘Who?’
‘The other chaperone. Mrs Dodds. The maths teacher.’
He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. ‘Percy, there is no Mrs Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?’
2 Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death
I was used to the occasional weird experience, but usually they were over quickly. This twenty-four/seven hallucination was more than I could handle. For the rest of the school year, the entire campus seemed to be playing some kind of trick on me. The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that Mrs Kerr – a perky blonde woman whom I’d never seen in my life until she got on our bus at the end of the field trip – had been our maths teacher since Christmas.
Every so often I would spring a Mrs Dodds reference on somebody, just to see if I could trip them up, but they would stare at me like I was psycho.
It got so I almost believed them – Mrs Dodds had never existed.
Almost.
But Grover couldn’t fool me. When I mentioned the name Dodds to him, he would hesitate, then claim she didn’t exist. But I knew he was lying.
Something was going on. Something had happened at the museum.
I didn’t have much time to think about it during the days, but at night, visions of Mrs Dodds with talons and leathery wings would wake me up in a cold sweat.
The freak weather continued, which didn’t help my mood. One night, a thunderstorm blew out the windows in my dorm room. A few days later, the biggest tornado ever spotted in the Hudson Valley touched down only fifty miles from Yancy Academy. One of the current events we studied in social studies class was the unusual number of small planes that had gone down in sudden squalls in the Atlantic that year.
I started feeling cranky and irritable most of the time. My grades slipped from Ds to Fs. I got into more fights with Nancy Bobofit and her friends. I was sent out into the hallway in almost every class.
Finally, when our English teacher, Mr Nicoll, asked me for the millionth time why I was too lazy to study for spelling tests, I snapped. I called him an old sot. I wasn’t even sure what it meant, but it sounded good.
The headmaster sent my mom a letter the following week, making it official: I would not be invited back next year to Yancy Academy.
Fine, I told myself. Just fine.
I was homesick.
I wanted to be with my mom in our little apartment on the Upper East Side, even if I had to go to public school and put up with my obnoxious stepfather and his stupid poker parties.
And yet… there were things I’d miss at Yancy. The view of the woods out my dorm window, the Hudson River in the distance, the smell of pine trees. I’d miss Grover, who’d been a good friend, even if he was a little strange. I worried how he’d survive next year without me.
I’d miss Latin class, too – Mr Brunner’s crazy tournament days and his faith that I could do well.
As exam week got closer, Latin was the only test I studied for. I hadn’t forgotten what Mr Brunner had told me about this subject being life-and-death for me. I wasn’t sure why, but I’d started to believe him.
The evening before my final, I got so frustrated I threw the Cambridge Guide to Greek Mythology across my dorm room. Words had started swimming off the page, circling my head, the letters doing one-eighties as if they were riding skateboards. There was no way I was going to remember the difference between Chiron and Charon, or Polydictes and Polydeuces. And conjugating those Latin verbs? Forget it.
I paced the room, feeling like ants were crawling around inside my shirt.
I remembered Mr Brunner’s serious expression, his thousand-year-old eyes. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson.
I took a deep breath. I picked up the mythology book.
I’d never asked a teacher for help before. Maybe if I talked to Mr Brunner, he could give me some pointers. At least I could apologize for the big fat ‘F’ I was about to score on his exam. I didn’t want to leave Yancy Academy with him thinking I hadn’t tried.
I walked downstairs to the faculty offices. Most of them were dark and empty, but Mr Brunner’s door was ajar, light from his window stretching across the hallway floor.
I was three steps from the door handle when I heard voices inside the office. Mr Brunner asked a question. A voice that was definitely Grover’s said, ‘… worried about Percy, sir.’
I froze.
I’m not usually an eavesdropper, but I dare you to try not listening if you hear your best friend talking about you to an adult.
I inched closer.
‘… alone this summer,’ Grover was saying. ‘I mean, a Kindly One in the school! Now that we know for sure, and they know too –’
‘We would only make matters worse by rushing him,’ Mr Brunner said. ‘We need the boy to mature more.’
‘But he may not have time. The summer solstice deadline –’
‘Will have to be resolved without him, Grover. Let him enjoy his ignorance while he still can.’
‘Sir, he saw her…’
‘His imagination,’ Mr Brunner insisted. ‘The Mist over the students and staff will be enough to convince him of that.’
‘Sir, I… I can’t fail in my duties again.’ Grover’s voice was choked with emotion. ‘You know what that would mean.’
‘You haven’t failed, Grover,’ Mr Brunner said kindly. ‘I should have seen her for what she was. Now let’s just worry about keeping Percy alive until next autumn –’
The mythology book dropped out of my hand and hit the floor with a thud.
Mr Brunner went silent.
My heart hammering, I picked up the book and backed down the hall.
A shadow slid across the lighted glass of Brunner’s office door, the shadow of something much taller than my wheelchair-bound teacher, holding something that looked suspiciously like an archer’s bow.
I opened the nearest door and slipped inside.
A few seconds later I heard a slow clop-clop-clop, like muffled wood blocks, then a sound like an animal snuffling right outside my door. A large dark shape paused in front of the glass, then moved on.
A bead of sweat trickled down my neck.
Somewhere in the hallway, Mr Brunner spoke. ‘Nothing,’ he murmured. ‘My nerves haven’t been right since the winter solstice.’
‘Mine neither,’ Grover said. ‘But I could have sworn…’
‘Go back to the dorm,’ Mr Brunner told him. ‘You’ve got a long day of exams tomorrow.’
‘Don’t remind me.’
The lights went out in Mr Brunner’s office.
I waited in the dark for what seemed like forever.
Finally, I slipped out into the hallway and made my way back up to the dorm.
Grover was lying on his bed, studying his Latin exam notes like he’d been there all night.
‘Hey,’ he said, bleary-eyed. ‘You going to be ready for this test?’
I didn’t answer.
‘You look awful.’ He frowned. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘Just… tired.’
I turned so he couldn’t read my expression, and started getting ready for bed.
I didn’t understand what I’d heard downstairs. I wanted to believe I’d imagined the whole thing.
But one thing was clear: Grover and Mr Brunner were talking about me behind my back. They thought I was in some kind of danger.
The next afternoon, as I was leaving the three-hour Latin exam, my eyes swimming with all the Greek and Roman names I’d misspelled, Mr Brunner called me back inside.
For a moment, I was worried he’d found out about my eavesdropping the night before, but that didn’t seem to be the problem.
‘Percy,’ he said. ‘Don’t be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It’s… it’s for the best.’
His tone was kind, but the words still embarrassed me. Even though he was speaking quietly, the other kids finishing the test could hear. Nancy Bobofit smirked at me and made sarcastic little kissing motions with her lips.
I mumbled, ‘Okay, sir.’
‘I mean…’ Mr Brunner wheeled his chair back and forth, like he wasn’t sure what to say. ‘This isn’t the right place for you. It was only a matter of time.’
My eyes stung.
Here was my favourite teacher, in front of the class, telling me I couldn’t handle it. After saying he believed in me all year, now he was telling me I was destined to get kicked out.
‘Right,’ I said, trembling.
‘No, no,’ Mr Brunner said. ‘Oh, confound it all. What I’m trying to say… you’re not normal, Percy. That’s nothing to be –’
‘Thanks,’ I blurted. ‘Thanks a lot, sir, for reminding me.’
‘Percy –’
But I was already gone.
On the last day of the term, I shoved my clothes into my suitcase.
The other guys were joking around, talking about their vacation plans. One of them was going on a hiking trip to Switzerland. Another was cruising the Caribbean for a month. They were juvenile delinquents, like me, but they were rich juvenile delinquents. Their daddies were executives, or ambassadors, or celebrities. I was a nobody, from a family of nobodies.
They asked me what I’d be doing this summer and I told them I was going back to the city.
What I didn’t tell them was that I’d have to get a summer job walking dogs or selling magazine subscriptions, and spend my free time worrying about where I’d go to school in the autumn.
‘Oh,’ one of the guys said. ‘That’s cool.’
They went back to their conversation as if I’d never existed.
The only person I dreaded saying goodbye to was Grover but, as it turned out, I didn’t have to. He’d booked a ticket to Manhattan on the same Greyhound as I had, so there we were, together again, heading into the city.
During the whole bus ride, Grover kept glancing nervously down the aisle, watching the other passengers. It occurred to me that he’d always acted nervous and fidgety when we left Yancy, as if he expected something bad to happen. Before, I’d always assumed he was worried about getting teased. But there was nobody to tease him on the Greyhound.
Finally I couldn’t stand it any more.
I said, ‘Looking for Kindly Ones?’
Grover nearly jumped out of his seat. ‘Wha – what do you mean?’
I confessed about eavesdropping on him and Mr Brunner the night before the exam.
Grover’s eye twitched. ‘How much did you hear?’
‘Oh… not much. What’s the summer-solstice deadline?’
He winced. ‘Look, Percy… I was just worried for you, see? I mean, hallucinating about demon maths teachers…’
‘Grover –’
‘And I was telling Mr Brunner that maybe you were overstressed or something, because there was no such person as Mrs Dodds, and…’
‘Grover, you’re a really, really bad liar.’
His ears turned pink.
From his shirt pocket, he fished out a grubby business card. ‘Just take this, okay? In case you need me this summer.’
The card was in fancy script, which was murder on my dyslexic eyes, but I finally made out something like:
Grover Underwood, Keeper
Half-Blood Hill
Long Island, New York
(800)009-0009
‘What’s Half –’
‘Don’t say it aloud!’ he yelped. ‘That’s my, um… summer address.’
My heart sank. Grover had a summer home. I’d never considered that his family might be as rich as the others at Yancy.
‘Okay,’ I said glumly. ‘So, like, if I want to come visit your mansion.’
He nodded. ‘Or… or if you need me.’
‘Why would I need you?’
It came out harsher than I meant it too.
Grover blushed right down to his Adam’s apple. ‘Look, Percy, the truth is, I – I kind of have to protect you.’
I stared at him.
All year long, I’d gotten in fights keeping bullies away from him. I’d lost sleep worrying that he’d get beaten up next year without me. And here he was acting like he was the one who defended me.
‘Grover,’ I said, ‘what exactly are you protecting me from?’
There was a huge grinding noise under our feet. Black smoke poured from the dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs. The driver cursed and limped the Greyhound over to the side of the highway.
After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver announced that we’d all have to get off. Grover and I filed outside with everybody else.
We were on a stretch of country road – no place you’d notice if you didn’t break down there. On our side of the highway was nothing but maple trees and litter from passing cars. On the other side, across four lanes of asphalt shimmering with afternoon heat, was an old-fashioned fruit stand.
The stuff on sale looked really good: heaping boxes of blood-red cherries and apples, walnuts and apricots, jugs of cider in a claw-foot tub full of ice. There were no customers, just three old ladies sitting in rocking chairs in the shade of a maple tree, knitting the biggest pair of socks I’d ever seen.
I mean these socks were the size of sweaters, but they were clearly socks. The lady on the right knitted one of them. The lady on the left knitted the other. The lady in the middle held an enormous basket of electric-blue yarn.
All three women looked ancient, with pale faces wrinkled like fruit leather, silver hair tied back in white bandannas, bony arms sticking out of bleached cotton dresses.
The weirdest thing was, they seemed to be looking right at me.
I looked over at Grover to say something about this and saw that the blood had drained from his face. His nose was twitching.
‘Grover?’ I said. ‘Hey, man –’
‘Tell me they’re not looking at you. They are. Aren’t they?’
‘Yeah. Weird, huh? You think those socks would fit me?’
‘Not funny, Percy. Not funny at all.’
The old lady in the middle took out a huge pair of scissors – gold and silver, long-bladed, like shears. I heard Grover catch his breath.
‘We’re getting on the bus,’ he told me. ‘Come on.’
‘What?’ I said. ‘It’s a thousand degrees in there.’
‘Come on!’ He prised open the door and climbed inside, but I stayed back.
Across the road, the old ladies were still watching me. The middle one cut the yarn, and I swear I could hear that snip across four lanes of traffic. Her two friends balled up the electric-blue socks, leaving me wondering who they could possibly be for – Sasquatch or Godzilla.
At the rear of the bus, the driver wrenched a big chunk of smoking metal out of the engine compartment. The bus shuddered, and the engine roared back to life.
The passengers cheered.
‘Darn right!’ yelled the driver. He slapped the bus with his hat. ‘Everybody back on board!’
Once we got going. I started feeling feverish, as if I’d caught the flu.
Grover didn’t look much better. He was shivering and his teeth were chattering.
‘Grover?’
‘Yeah?’
‘What are you not telling me?’
He dabbed his forehead with his shirt sleeve. ‘Percy, what did you see back at the fruit stand?’
‘You mean the old ladies? What is it about them, man? They’re not like… Mrs Dodds, are they?’
His expression was hard to read, but I got the feeling that the fruit-stand ladies were something much, much worse than Mrs Dodds. He said, ‘Just tell me what you saw.’
‘The middle one took out her scissors, and she cut the yarn.’
He closed his eyes and made a gesture with his fingers that might’ve been crossing himself, but it wasn’t. It was something else, something almost – older.
He said, ‘You saw her snip the cord.’
‘Yeah. So?’ But even as I said it, I knew it was a big deal.
‘This is not happening,’ Grover mumbled. He started chewing at his thumb. ‘I don’t want this to be like the last time.’
‘What last time?’
‘Always sixth grade. They never get past sixth.’
‘Grover,’ I said, because he was really starting to scare me. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Let me walk you home from the bus station. Promise me.’
This seemed like a strange request to me, but I promised he could.
‘Is this like a superstition or something?’ I asked.
No answer.
‘Grover – that snipping of the yarn. Does that mean somebody is going to die?’
He looked at me mournfully, like he was already picking the kind of flowers I’d like best on my coffin.
3 Grover Unexpectedly Loses His Trousers
Confession time: I ditched Grover as soon as we got to the bus terminal.
I know, I know. It was rude. But Grover was freaking me out, looking at me like I was a dead man, muttering, ‘Why does this always happen?’ and, ‘Why does it always have to be sixth grade?’
Whenever he got upset, Grover’s bladder acted up, so I wasn’t surprised when, as soon as we got off the bus, he made me promise to wait for him, then made a beeline for the restroom. Instead of waiting, I got my suitcase, slipped outside, and caught the first taxi uptown.
‘East One Hundred and Fourth and First Avenue,’ I told the driver.
A word about my mother, before you meet her.
Her name is Sally Jackson and she’s the best person in the world, which just proves my theory that the best people have the rottenest luck. Her own parents died in a plane crash when she was five, and she was raised by an uncle who didn’t care much about her. She wanted to be a novelist, so she spent high school working to save enough money for a college with a good creative-writing programme. Then her uncle got cancer, and she had to quit school in her senior year to take care of him. After he died, she was left with no money, no family and no diploma.
The only good break she ever got was meeting my dad.
I don’t have any memories of him, just this sort of warm glow, maybe the barest trace of his smile. My mom doesn’t like to talk about him because it makes her sad. She has no pictures.
See, they weren’t married. She told me he was rich and important, and their relationship was a secret. Then one day, he set sail across the Atlantic on some important journey, and he never came back.
Lost at sea, my mom told me. Not dead. Lost at sea.
She worked odd jobs, took night classes to get her high school diploma, and raised me on her own. She never complained or got mad. Not even once. But I knew I wasn’t an easy kid.
Finally, she married Gabe Ugliano, who was nice the first thirty seconds we knew him, then showed his true colours as a world-class jerk. When I was young, I nicknamed him Smelly Gabe. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. The guy reeked like mouldy garlic pizza wrapped in gym shorts.
Between the two of us, we made my mom’s life pretty hard. The way Smelly Gabe treated her, the way he and I got along… well, when I came home is a good example.
I walked into our little apartment, hoping my mom would be home from work. Instead, Smelly Gabe was in the living room, playing poker with his buddies. The television was blaring. Crisps and beer cans were strewn all over the carpet.
Hardly looking up, he said around his cigar, ‘So, you’re home.’
‘Where’s my mom?’
‘Working,’ he said. ‘You got any cash?’
That was it. No Welcome back. Good to see you. How has your life been the last six months?
Gabe had put on weight. He looked like a tuskless walrus in thrift-store clothes. He had about three hairs on his head, all combed over his bald scalp, as if that made him handsome or something.
He managed the Electronics Mega-Mart in Queens, but he stayed home most of the time. I don’t know why he hadn’t been fired long before. He just kept on collecting pay cheques, spending the money on cigars that made me nauseous, and on beer, of course. Always beer. Whenever I was home, he expected me to provide his gambling funds. He called that our ‘guy secret’. Meaning, if I told my mom, he would punch my lights out.
‘I don’t have any cash,’ I told him.
He raised a greasy eyebrow.
Gabe could sniff out money like a bloodhound, which was surprising, since his own smell should’ve covered up everything else.
‘You took a taxi from the bus station,’ he said. ‘Probably paid with a twenty. Got six, seven bucks in change. Somebody expects to live under this roof, he ought to carry his own weight. Am I right, Eddie?’
Eddie, the superintendant of the apartment building, looked at me with a twinge of sympathy. ‘Come on, Gabe,’ he said. ‘The kid just got here.’
‘Am I right?’ Gabe repeated.
Eddie scowled into his bowl of pretzels. The other two guys passed gas in harmony.
‘Fine,’ I said. I dug a wad of dollars out of my pocket and threw the money on the table. ‘I hope you lose.’
‘Your report card came, brain boy!’ he shouted after me. ‘I wouldn’t act so snooty!’
I slammed the door to my room, which really wasn’t my room. During school months, it was Gabe’s ‘study’. He didn’t study anything in there except old car magazines, but he loved shoving my stuff in the closet, leaving his muddy boots on my windowsill, and doing his best to make the place smell like his nasty cologne and cigars and stale beer.
I dropped my suitcase on the bed. Home sweet home.
Gabe’s smell was almost worse than the nightmares about Mrs Dodds, or the sound of that old fruit lady’s shears snipping the yarn.
But as soon as I thought that, my legs felt weak. I remembered Grover’s look of panic – how he’d made me promise I wouldn’t go home without him. A sudden chill rolled through me. I felt like someone – something – was looking for me right now, maybe pounding its way up the stairs, growing long, horrible talons.
Then I heard my mom’s voice. ‘Percy?’
She opened the bedroom door, and my fears melted.
My mother can make me feel good just by walking into the room. Her eyes sparkle and change colour in the light. Her smile is as warm as a quilt. She’s got a few grey streaks mixed in with her long brown hair, but I never think of her as old. When she looks at me, it’s like she’s seeing all the good things about me, none of the bad. I’ve never heard her raise her voice or say an unkind word to anyone, not even me or Gabe.
‘Oh, Percy.’ She hugged me tight. ‘I can’t believe it. You’ve grown since Christmas!’
Her red-white-and-blue Sweet on America uniform smelled like the best things in the world: chocolate, licorice, and all the other stuff she sold at the candy shop in Grand Central. She’d brought me a huge bag of ‘free samples’, the way she always did when I came home.
We sat together on the edge of the bed. While I attacked the blueberry sour strings, she ran her hand through my hair and demanded to know everything I hadn’t put in my letters. She didn’t mention anything about my getting expelled. She didn’t seem to care about that. But was I okay? Was her little boy doing all right?
I told her she was smothering me, and to lay off and all that, but secretly, I was really, really glad to see her.
From the other room, Gabe yelled, ‘Hey, Sally – how about some bean dip, huh?’
I gritted my teeth.
My mom is the nicest lady in the world. She should’ve been married to a millionaire, not to some jerk like Gabe.
For her sake, I tried to sound upbeat about my last days at Yancy Academy. I told her I wasn’t too down about the expulsion. I’d lasted almost the whole year this time. I’d made some new friends. I’d done pretty well in Latin. And honestly, the fights hadn’t been as bad as the headmaster said. I liked Yancy Academy. I really had. I put such a good spin on the year, I almost convinced myself. I started choking up, thinking about Grover and Mr Brunner. Even Nancy Bobofitt suddenly didn’t seem so bad.
Until that trip to the museum…
‘What?’ my mom asked. Her eyes tugged at my conscience, trying to pull out the secrets. ‘Did something scare you?’
‘No, Mom.’
I felt bad lying. I wanted to tell her about Mrs Dodds and the three old ladies with the yarn, but I thought it would sound stupid.
She pursed her lips. She knew I was holding back, but she didn’t push me.
‘I have a surprise for you,’ she said. ‘We’re going to the beach.’
My eyes widened. ‘Montauk?’
‘Three nights – same cabin.’
‘When?’
She smiled. ‘As soon as I get changed.’
I couldn’t believe it. My mom and I hadn’t been to Montauk the last two summers, because Gabe said there wasn’t enough money.
Gabe appeared in the doorway and growled, ‘Bean dip, Sally? Didn’t you hear me?’
I wanted to punch him, but I met my mom’s eyes and I understood she was offering me a deal: be nice to Gabe for a little while. Just until she was ready to leave for Montauk. Then we would get out of here.
‘I was on my way, honey,’ she told Gabe. ‘We were just talking about the trip.’
Gabe’s eyes got small. ‘The trip? You mean you were serious about that?’
‘I knew it,’ I muttered. ‘He won’t let us go.’
‘Of course he will,’ my mom said evenly. ‘Your stepfather is just worried about money. That’s all. Besides,’ she added, ‘Gabriel won’t have to settle for bean dip. I’ll make him enough seven-layer dip for the whole weekend. Guacamole. Sour cream. The works.’
Gabe softened a bit. ‘So this money for your trip… it comes out of your clothes budget, right?’
‘Yes, honey,’ my mother said.
‘And you won’t take my car anywhere but there and back.’
‘We’ll be very careful.’
Gabe scratched his double chin. ‘Maybe if you hurry with that seven-layer dip… And maybe if the kid apologizes for interrupting my poker game.’
Maybe if I kick you in your soft spot, I thought. And make you sing soprano for a week.
But my mom’s eyes warned me not to make him mad.
Why did she put up with this guy? I wanted to scream. Why did she care what he thought?
‘I’m sorry,’ I muttered. ‘I’m really sorry I interrupted your incredibly important poker game. Please go back to it right now.’
Gabe’s eyes narrowed. His tiny brain was probably trying to detect sarcasm in my statement.
‘Yeah, whatever,’ he decided.
He went back to his game.
‘Thank you, Percy,’ my mom said. ‘Once we get to Montauk, we’ll talk more about… whatever you’ve forgotten to tell me, okay?’
For a moment, I thought I saw anxiety in her eyes – the same fear I’d seen in Grover during the bus ride – as if my mom too felt an odd chill in the air.
But then her smile returned, and I figured I must have been mistaken. She ruffled my hair and went to make Gabe his seven-layer dip.
An hour later we were ready to leave.
Gabe took a break from his poker game long enough to watch me lug my mom’s bags to the car. He kept griping and groaning about losing her cooking – and more important, his ‘78 Camaro – for the whole weekend.
‘Not a scratch on this car, brain boy,’ he warned me as I loaded the last bag. ‘Not one little scratch.’
Like I’d be the one driving. I was twelve. But that didn’t matter to Gabe. If a seagull so much as pooped on his paint job, he’d find a way to blame me.
Watching him lumber back towards the apartment building, I got so mad I did something I can’t explain. As Gabe reached the doorway, I made the hand gesture I’d seen Grover make on the bus, a sort of warding-off-evil gesture, a clawed hand over my heart, then a shoving movement towards Gabe. The screen door slammed shut so hard it whacked him in the butt and sent him flying up the staircase as if he’d been shot from a cannon. Maybe it was just the wind, or some freak accident with the hinges, but I didn’t stay long enough to find out.
I got in the Camaro and told my mom to step on it.
Our rental cabin was on the south shore, way out at the tip of Long Island. It was a little pastel box with faded curtains, half sunken into the dunes. There was always sand in the sheets and spiders in the cabinets, and most of the time the sea was too cold to swim in.
I loved the place.
We’d been going there since I was a baby. My mom had been going even longer. She never exactly said, but I knew why the beach was special to her. It was the place where she’d met my dad.
As we got closer to Montauk, she seemed to grow younger, years of worry and work disappearing from her face. Her eyes turned the colour of the sea.
We got there at sunset, opened all the cabin’s windows, and went through our usual cleaning routine. We walked on the beach, fed blue corn chips to the seagulls, and munched on blue jelly beans, blue saltwater taffy, and all the other free samples my mom had brought from work.
I guess I should explain the blue food.
See, Gabe had once told my mom there was no such thing. They had this fight, which seemed like a really small thing at the time. But ever since, my mom went out of her way to eat blue. She baked blue birthday cakes. She mixed blueberry smoothies. She bought blue-corn tortilla chips and brought home blue candy from the shop. This – along with keeping her maiden name, Jackson, rather than calling herself Mrs Ugliano – was proof that she wasn’t totally suckered by Gabe. She did have a rebellious streak, like me.
When it got dark, we made a fire. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. Mom told me stories about when she was a kid, back before her parents died in the plane crash. She told me about the books she wanted to write someday, when she had enough money to quit the candy shop.
Eventually, I got up the nerve to ask about what was always on my mind whenever we came to Montauk – my father. Mom’s eyes went all misty. I figured she would tell me the same things she always did, but I never got tired of hearing them.
‘He was kind, Percy,’ she said. ‘Tall, handsome and powerful. But gentle, too. You have his black hair, you know, and his green eyes.’
Mom fished a blue jelly bean out of her candy bag. ‘I wish he could see you, Percy. He would be so proud.’
I wondered how she could say that. What was so great about me? A dyslexic, hyperactive boy with a D+ report card, kicked out of school for the sixth time in six years.
‘How old was I?’ I asked. ‘I mean… when he left?’
She watched the flames. ‘He was only with me for one summer, Percy. Right here at this beach. This cabin.’
‘But… he knew me as a baby.’
‘No, honey. He knew I was expecting a baby, but he never saw you. He had to leave before you were born.’
I tried to square that with the fact that I seemed to remember… something about my father. A warm glow. A smile.
I had always assumed he knew me as a baby. My mom had never said it outright, but still, I’d felt it must be true. Now, to be told that he’d never even seen me…
I felt angry at my father. Maybe it was stupid, but I resented him for going on that ocean voyage, for not having the guts to marry my mom. He’d left us, and now we were stuck with Smelly Gabe.
‘Are you going to send me away again?’ I asked her. ‘To another boarding school?’
She pulled a marshmallow from the fire.
‘I don’t know, honey.’ Her voice was heavy. ‘I think… I think we’ll have to do something.’
‘Because you don’t want me around?’ I regretted the words as soon as they were out.
My mom’s eyes welled with tears. She took my hand, squeezed it tight. ‘Oh, Percy, no. I – I have to, honey. For your own good. I have to send you away.’
Her words reminded me of what Mr Brunner had said – that it was best for me to leave Yancy.
‘Because I’m not normal,’ I said.
‘You say that as if it’s a bad thing, Percy. But you don’t realize how important you are. I thought Yancy Academy would be far enough away. I thought you’d finally be safe.’
‘Safe from what?’
She met my eyes, and a flood of memories came back to me – all the weird, scary things that had ever happened to me, some of which I’d tried to forget.
During third grade, a man in a black trench coat had stalked me on the playground. When the teachers threatened to call the police, he went away growling, but no one believed me when I told them that under his broad-brimmed hat, the man only had one eye, right in the middle of his head.
Before that – a really early memory. I was in pre school, and a teacher accidentally put me down for a nap in a cot that a snake had slithered into. My mom screamed when she came to pick me up and found me playing with a limp, scaly rope I’d somehow managed to strangle to death with my meaty toddler hands.
In every single school, something creepy had happened, something unsafe, and I was forced to move.
I knew I should tell my mom about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs Dodds at the art museum, about my weird hallucination that I had sliced my maths teacher into dust with a sword. But I couldn’t make myself tell her. I had a strange feeling the news would end our trip to Montauk, and I didn’t want that.
‘I’ve tried to keep you as close to me as I could,’ my mom said. ‘They told me that was a mistake. But there’s only one other option, Percy – the place your father wanted to send you. And I just… I just can’t stand to do it.’
‘My father wanted me to go to a special school?’
‘Not a school,’ she said softly. ‘A summer camp.’
My head was spinning. Why would my dad – who hadn’t even stayed around long enough to see me born – talk to my mom about a summer camp? And if it was so important, why hadn’t she ever mentioned it before?
‘I’m sorry, Percy,’ she said, seeing the look in my eyes. ‘But I can’t talk about it. I – I couldn’t send you to that place. It might mean saying goodbye to you for good.’
‘For good? But if it’s only a summer camp…’
She turned towards the fire, and I knew from her expression that if I asked her any more questions she would start to cry.
That night I had a vivid dream.
It was storming on the beach, and two beautiful animals, a white horse and a golden eagle, were trying to kill each other at the edge of the surf. The eagle swooped down and slashed the horse’s muzzle with its huge talons. The horse reared up and kicked at the eagle’s wings. As they fought, the ground rumbled, and a monstrous voice chuckled somewhere beneath the earth, goading the animals to fight harder.
I ran towards them, knowing I had to stop them from killing each other, but I was running in slow motion. I knew I would be too late. I saw the eagle dive down, its beak aimed at the horse’s wide eyes, and I screamed, No!
I woke with a start.
Outside, it really was storming, the kind of storm that cracks trees and blows down houses. There was no horse or eagle on the beach, just lightning making false daylight, and five-metre-high waves pounding the dunes like artillery.
With the next thunderclap, my mom woke. She sat up, eyes wide, and said, ‘Hurricane.’
I knew that was crazy. Long Island never saw hurricanes this early in the summer. But the ocean seemed to have forgotten. Over the roar of the wind, I heard a distant bellow, an angry, tortured sound that made my hair stand on end.
Then a much closer noise, like mallets in the sand. A desperate voice – someone yelling, pounding on our cabin door.
My mother sprang out of bed in her nightgown and threw open the lock.
Grover stood framed in the doorway against a backdrop of pouring rain. But he wasn’t… he wasn’t exactly Grover.
‘Searching all night,’ he gasped. ‘What were you thinking?’
My mother looked at me in terror – not scared of Grover, but of why he’d come.
‘Percy,’ she said, shouting to be heard over the rain. ‘What happened at school? What didn’t you tell me?’
I was frozen, looking at Grover. I couldn’t understand what I was seeing.
‘O Zeu kai alloi theoi!’ he yelled. ‘It’s right behind me! Didn’t you tell her?’
I was too shocked to register that he’d just cursed in Ancient Greek, and I’d understood him perfectly. I was too shocked to wonder how Grover had got here by himself in the middle of the night. Because Grover didn’t have his trousers on – and where his legs should be… where his legs should be…
My mom looked at me sternly and talked in a tone she’d never used before:’Percy. Tell me now!’
I stammered something about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs Dodds, and my mom stared at me, her face deathly pale in the flashes of lightning.
She grabbed her purse, tossed me my rain jacket, and said, ‘Get to the car. Both of you. Go!’
Grover ran for the Camaro – but he wasn’t running, exactly. He was trotting, shaking his shaggy hindquarters, and suddenly his story about a muscular disorder in his legs made sense to me. I understood how he could run so fast and still limp when he walked.
Because where his feet should be, there were no feet. There were cloven hooves.
4 My Mother Teaches Me Bullfighting
We tore through the night along dark country roads. Wind slammed against the Camaro. Rain lashed the windshield. I didn’t know how my mom could see anything, but she kept her foot on the gas.
Every time there was a flash of lightning, I looked at Grover sitting next to me in the backseat and I wondered if I’d gone insane, or if he was wearing some kind of shag-carpet trousers. But, no, the smell was one I remembered from kindergarten field trips to the petting zoo – lanolin, like from wool. The smell of a wet barnyard animal.
All I could think to say was, ‘So, you and my mum… know each other?’
Grover’s eyes flitted to the rearview mirror, though there were no cars behind us. ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘I mean, we’ve never met in person. But she knew I was watching you.’
‘Watching me?’
‘Keeping tabs on you. Making sure you were okay. But I wasn’t faking being your friend,’ he added hastily. ‘I am your friend.’
‘Um… what are you, exactly?’
‘That doesn’t matter right now.’
‘It doesn’t matter? From the waist down, my best friend is a donkey –’
Grover let out a sharp, throaty ‘Blaa-ha-ha!’
I’d heard him make that sound before, but I’d always assumed it was a nervous laugh. Now I realized it was more of an irritated bleat.
‘Goat!’ he cried.
‘What?’
‘I’m a goat from the waist down.’
‘You just said it didn’t matter.’
‘Blaa-ha-ha! There are satyrs who would trample you under hoof for such an insult!’
‘Whoa. Wait. Satyrs. You mean like… Mr Brunner’s myths?’
‘Were those old ladies at the fruit stand a myth, Percy? Was Mrs Dodds a myth?’
‘So you admit there was a Mrs Dodds!’
‘Of course.’
‘Then why –’
‘The less you knew, the fewer monsters you’d attract,’ Grover said, like that should be perfectly obvious. ‘We put Mist over the humans’ eyes. We hoped you’d think the Kindly One was a hallucination. But it was no good. You started to realize who you are.’
‘Who I – wait a minute, what do you mean?’
The weird bellowing noise rose up again somewhere behind us, closer than before. Whatever was chasing us was still on our trail.
‘Percy,’ my mom said, ‘there’s too much to explain and not enough time. We have to get you to safety.’
‘Safety from what? Who’s after me?’
‘Oh, nobody much,’ Grover said, obviously still miffed about the donkey comment. ‘Just the Lord of the Dead and a few of his blood-thirstiest minions.’
‘Grover!’
‘Sorry, Mrs Jackson. Could you drive faster, please?’
I tried to wrap my mind around what was happening, but I couldn’t do it. I knew this wasn’t a dream. I had no imagination. I could never dream up something this weird.
My mom made a hard left. We swerved onto a narrower road, racing past darkened farmhouses and wooded hills and PICK YOUR OWN STRAWBERRIES signs on white picket fences.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked.
‘The summer camp I told you about.’ My mother’s voice was tight; she was trying for my sake not to be scared. ‘The place your father wanted to send you.’
‘The place you didn’t want me to go.’
‘Please, dear,’ my mother begged. ‘This is hard enough. Try to understand. You’re in danger.’
‘Because some old ladies cut yarn.’
‘Those weren’t old ladies,’ Grover said. ‘Those were the Fates. Do you know what it means – the fact they appeared in front of you? They only do that when you’re about to… when someone’s about to die.’
‘Whoa. You said “you”.’
‘No I didn’t. I said “someone”.’
‘You meant “you”. As in me.’
‘I meant you, like “someone”. Not you, you.’
‘Boys!’ my mom said.
She pulled the wheel hard to the right, and I got a glimpse of a figure she’d swerved to avoid – a dark fluttering shape now lost behind us in the storm.
‘What was that?’ I asked.
‘We’re almost there,’ my mother said, ignoring my question. ‘Another mile. Please. Please. Please.’
I didn’t know where there was, but I found myself leaning forward in the car, anticipating, wanting us to arrive.
Outside, nothing but rain and darkness – the kind of empty countryside you get way out on the tip of Long Island. I thought about Mrs Dodds and the moment when she’d changed into the thing with pointed teeth and leathery wings. My limbs went numb from delayed shock. She really hadn’t been human. She’d meant to kill me.
Then I thought about Mr Brunner… and the sword he had thrown me. Before I could ask Grover about that, the hair rose on the back of my neck. There was a blinding flash, a jaw-rattling boom!, and our car exploded.
I remember feeling weightless, like I was being crushed, fried and hosed down all at the same time.
I peeled my forehead off the back of the driver’s seat and said, ‘Ow.’
‘Percy!’ my mom shouted.
‘I’m okay….’
I tried to shake off the daze. I wasn’t dead. The car hadn’t really exploded. We’d swerved into a ditch. Our driver’s-side doors were wedged in the mud. The roof had cracked open like an eggshell and rain was pouring in.
Lightning. That was the only explanation. We’d been blasted right off the road. Next to me in the backseat was a big motionless lump. ‘Grover!’
He was slumped over, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. I shook his furry hip, thinking, No! Even if you are half barnyard animal, you’re my best friend and I don’t want you to die!
Then he groaned, ‘Food,’ and I knew there was hope.
‘Percy,’ my mother said, ‘we have to…’ Her voice faltered.
I looked back. In a flash of lightning, through the mud-spattered rear windshield, I saw a figure lumbering towards us on the shoulder of the road. The sight of it made my skin crawl. It was a dark silhouette of a huge guy, like a football player. He seemed to be holding a blanket over his head. His top half was bulky and fuzzy. His upraised hands made it look like he had horns.
I swallowed hard. ‘Who is –’
‘Percy,’ my mother said, deadly serious. ‘Get out of the car.’
My mother threw herself against the driver’s-side door. It was jammed shut in the mud. I tried mine. Stuck too. I looked up desperately at the hole in the roof. It might’ve been an exit, but the edges were sizzling and smoking.
‘Climb out the passenger’s side!’ my mother told me. ‘Percy – you have to run. Do you see that big tree?’
‘What?’
Another flash of lightning, and through the smoking hole in the roof I saw the tree she meant: a huge, White House Christmas-tree-sized pine at the crest of the nearest hill.
‘That’s the property line,’ my mom said. ‘Get over that hill and you’ll see a big farmhouse down in the valley. Run and don’t look back. Yell for help. Don’t stop until you reach the door.’
‘Mom, you’re coming, too.’
Her face was pale, her eyes as sad as when she looked at the ocean.
‘No!’ I shouted. ‘You are coming with me. Help me carry Grover.’
‘Food!’ Grover moaned, a little louder.
The man with the blanket on his head kept coming towards us, making his grunting, snorting noises. As he got closer, I realized he couldn’t be holding a blanket over his head, because his hands – huge meaty hands – were swinging at his sides. There was no blanket. Meaning the bulky, fuzzy mass that was too big to be his head… was his head. And the points that looked like horns…
‘He doesn’t want us,’ my mother told me. ‘He wants you. Besides, I can’t cross the property line.’
‘But…’
‘We don’t have time, Percy. Go. Please.’
I got mad, then – mad at my mother, at Grover the goat, at the thing with horns that was lumbering towards us slowly and deliberately like, like a bull.
I climbed across Grover and pushed the door open into the rain. ‘We’re going together. Come on, Mom.’
‘I told you –’
‘Mom! I am not leaving you. Help me with Grover.’
I didn’t wait for her answer. I scrambled outside, dragging Grover from the car. He was surprisingly light, but I couldn’t have carried him very far if my mom hadn’t come to my aid.
Together, we draped Grover’s arms over our shoulders and started stumbling uphill through wet waist-high grass.
Glancing back, I got my first clear look at the monster. He was seven feet tall, easy, his arms and legs like something from the cover of Muscle Man magazine – bulging biceps and triceps and a bunch of other ‘ceps, all stuffed like baseballs under vein-webbed skin. He wore no clothes except underwear – I mean, bright white Fruit-of-the-Looms, which would’ve been funny except for the top half of his body. Coarse brown hair started at about his bellybutton and got thicker as it reached his shoulders.
His neck was a mass of muscle and fur leading up to his enormous head, which had a snout as long as my arm, snotty nostrils with a gleaming brass ring, cruel black eyes, and horns – enormous black-and-white horns with points you just couldn’t get from an electric sharpener.
I recognized the monster, all right. He had been in one of the first stories Mr Brunner told us. But he couldn’t be real.
I blinked the rain out of my eyes. ‘That’s –’
‘Pasiphae’s son,’ my mother said. ‘I wish I’d known how badly they want to kill you.’
‘But a he’s a min–’
‘Don’t say his name,’ she warned. ‘Names have power.’
The pine tree was still way too far – a hundred metres uphill at least.
I glanced behind me again.
The bull-man hunched over our car, looking in the windows – or not looking, exactly. More like snuffling, nuzzling. I wasn’t sure why he bothered, since we were only about fifteen metres away.
‘Food?’ Grover moaned.
‘Shhh,’ I told him. ‘Mom, what’s he doing? Doesn’t he see us?’
‘His sight and hearing are terrible,’ she said. ‘He goes by smell. But he’ll figure out where we are soon enough.’
As if on cue, the bull-man bellowed in rage. He picked up Gabe’s Camaro by the torn roof, the chassis creaking and groaning. He raised the car over his head and threw it down the road. It slammed into the wet asphalt and skidded in a shower of sparks for about half a mile before coming to a stop. The gas tank exploded.
Not a scratch, I remembered Gabe saying.
Oops.
‘Percy,’ my mom said. ‘When he sees us, he’ll charge. Wait until the last second, then jump out of the way – directly sideways. He can’t change direction very well once he’s charging. Do you understand?’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘I’ve been worried about an attack for a long time. I should have expected this. I was selfish, keeping you near me.’
‘Keeping me near you? But –’
Another bellow of rage, and the bull-man started tromping uphill.
He’d smelled us.
The pine tree was only a few more metres, but the hill was getting steeper and slicker, and Grover wasn’t getting any lighter.
The bull-man closed in. Another few seconds and he’d be on top of us.
My mother must’ve been exhausted, but she shouldered Grover. ‘Go, Percy! Separate! Remember what I said.’
I didn’t want to split up, but I had the feeling she was right – it was our only chance. I sprinted to the left, turned, and saw the creature bearing down on me. His black eyes glowed with hate. He reeked like rotten meat.
He lowered his head and charged, those razor-sharp horns aimed straight at my chest.
The fear in my stomach made me want to bolt, but that wouldn’t work. I could never outrun this thing. So I held my ground, and at the last moment, I jumped to the side.
The bull-man stormed past like a freight train, then bellowed with frustration and turned, but not towards me this time, towards my mother, who was setting Grover down in the grass.
We’d reached the crest of the hill. Down the other side I could see a valley, just as my mother had said, and the lights of a farmhouse glowing yellow through the rain. But that was half a mile away. We’d never make it.
The bull-man grunted, pawing the ground. He kept eyeing my mother, who was now retreating slowly downhill, back towards the road, trying to lead the monster away from Grover.
‘Run, Percy!’ she told me. ‘I can’t go any further. Run!’
But I just stood there, frozen in fear, as the monster charged her. She tried to sidestep, as she’d told me to do, but the monster had learned his lesson. His hand shot out and grabbed her by the neck as she tried to get away. He lifted her as she struggled, kicking and pummelling the air.
‘Mom!’
She caught my eyes, managed to choke out one last word: ‘Go!’
Then, with an angry roar, the monster closed his fists around my mother’s neck, and she dissolved before my eyes, melting into light, a shimmering golden form, as if she were a holographic projection. A blinding flash, and she was simply… gone.
‘No!’
Anger replaced my fear. Newfound strength burned in my limbs – the same rush of energy I’d got when Mrs Dodds grew talons.
The bull-man bore down on Grover, who lay helpless in the grass. The monster hunched over, snuffling my best friend, as if he were about to lift Grover up and make him dissolve too.
I couldn’t allow that.
I stripped off my red rain jacket.
‘HEY!’ I screamed, waving the jacket, running to one side of the monster. ‘Hey, stupid! Ground beef!’
‘Raaaarrrrr!’ The monster turned towards me, shaking his meaty fists.
I had an idea – a stupid idea, but better than no idea at all. I put my back to the big pine tree and waved my red jacket in front of the bull-man, thinking I’d jump out of the way at the last moment.
But it didn’t happen like that.
The bull-man charged too fast, his arms out to grab me whichever way I tried to dodge.
Time slowed down.
My legs tensed. I couldn’t jump sideways, so I leaped straight up, kicking off from the creature’s head, using it as a springboard, turning in midair and landing on his neck.
How did I do that? I didn’t have time to figure it out. A millisecond later, the monster’s head slammed into the tree and the impact nearly knocked my teeth out.
The bull-man staggered around, trying to shake me. I locked my arms around his horns to keep from being thrown. Thunder and lightning were still going strong. The rain was in my eyes. The smell of rotten meat burned my nostrils.
The monster shook himself around and bucked like a rodeo bull. He should have just backed up into the tree and smashed me flat, but I was starting to realize that this thing had only one gear: forward.
Meanwhile, Grover started groaning in the grass. I wanted to yell at him to shut up, but the way I was getting tossed around, if I opened my mouth I’d bite my own tongue off.
‘Food!’ Grover moaned.
The bull-man wheeled towards him, pawed the ground again, and got ready to charge. I thought about how he had squeezed the life out of my mother, made her disappear in a flash of light, and rage filled me like high-octane fuel. I got both hands around one horn and I pulled backwards with all my might. The monster tensed, gave a surprised grunt, then – snap!
The bull-man screamed and flung me through the air. I landed flat on my back in the grass. My head smacked against a rock. When I sat up, my vision was blurry, but I had a horn in my hands, a ragged bone weapon the size of a knife.
The monster charged.
Without thinking, I rolled to one side and came up kneeling. As the monster barrelled past, I drove the broken horn straight into his side, right up under his furry rib cage.
The bull-man roared in agony. He flailed, clawing at his chest, then began to disintegrate – not like my mother, in a flash of golden light, but like crumbling sand, blown away in chunks by the wind, the same way Mrs Dodds had burst apart.
The monster was gone.
The rain had stopped. The storm still rumbled, but only in the distance. I smelled like livestock and my knees were shaking. My head felt like it was splitting open. I was weak and scared and trembling with grief. I’d just seen my mother vanish. I wanted to lie down and cry, but there was Grover, needing my help, so I managed to haul him up and stagger down into the valley, towards the lights of the farmhouse. I was crying, calling for my mother, but I held on to Grover – I wasn’t going to let him go.
The last thing I remember is collapsing on a wooden porch, looking up at a ceiling fan circling above me, moths flying around a yellow light and the stern faces of a familiar-looking bearded man and a pretty girl, her blonde hair curled like Cinderella’s. They both looked down at me, and the girl said, ‘He’s the one. He must be.’
‘Silence, Annabeth,’ the man said. ‘He’s still conscious. Bring him inside.’
5 I Play Pinochle with a Horse
I had weird dreams full of barnyard animals. Most of them wanted to kill me. The rest wanted food.
I must’ve woken up several times, but what I heard and saw made no sense, so I just passed out again. I remember lying in a soft bed, being spoon-fed something that tasted like buttered popcorn, only it was pudding. The girl with curly blonde hair hovered over me, smirking as she scraped drips off my chin with the spoon.
When she saw my eyes open, she asked, ‘What will happen at the summer solstice?’
I managed to croak, ‘What?’
She looked around, as if afraid someone would overhear. ‘What’s going on? What was stolen? We’ve only got a few weeks!’
‘I’m sorry,’ I mumbled, ‘I don’t…’
Somebody knocked on the door, and the girl quickly filled my mouth with pudding.
The next time I woke up, the girl was gone.
A husky blond dude, like a surfer, stood in the corner of the bedroom keeping watch over me. He had blue eyes – at least a dozen of them – on his cheeks, his forehead, the backs of his hands.
* * *
When I finally came around for good, there was nothing weird about my surroundings, except that they were nicer than I was used to. I was sitting in a deck chair on a huge porch, gazing across a meadow at green hills in the distance. The breeze smelled like strawberries. There was a blanket over my legs, a pillow behind my neck. All that was great, but my mouth felt like a scorpion had been using it for a nest. My tongue was dry and nasty and every one of my teeth hurt.
On the table next to me was a tall drink. It looked like iced apple juice, with a green straw and a paper parasol stuck through a maraschino cherry.
My hand was so weak I almost dropped the glass once I got my fingers around it.
‘Careful,’ a familiar voice said.
Grover was leaning against the porch railing, looking like he hadn’t slept in a week. Under one arm, he cradled a shoe box. He was wearing blue jeans, Converse hi-tops and a bright orange T-shirt that said CAMP HALF-BLOOD. Just plain old Grover. Not the goat boy.
So maybe I’d had a nightmare. Maybe my mom was okay. We were still on vacation, and we’d stopped here at this big house for some reason. And…
‘You saved my life,’ Grover said. ‘I… well, the least I could do… I went back to the hill. I thought you might want this.’
Reverently, he placed the shoe box in my lap.
Inside was a black-and-white bulls horn, the base jagged from being broken off, the tip splattered with dried blood. It hadn’t been a nightmare.
‘The Minotaur,’ said.
‘Um, Percy, it isn’t a good idea –’
‘That’s what they call it in the Greek myths, isn’t it?’ I demanded. ‘The Minotaur. Half man, half bull.’
Grover shifted uncomfortably. ‘You’ve been out for two days. How much do you remember?’
‘My mom. Is she really…’
He looked down.
I stared across the meadow. There were groves of trees, a winding stream, acres of strawberries spread out under the blue sky. The valley was surrounded by rolling hills, and the tallest one, directly in front of us, was the one with the huge pine tree on top. Even that looked beautiful in the sunlight.
My mother was gone. The whole world should be black and cold. Nothing should look beautiful.
‘I’m sorry,’ Grover sniffled. ‘I’m a failure. I’m – I’m the worst satyr in the world.’
He moaned, stomping his foot so hard it came off. I mean, the Converse hi-top came off. The inside was filled with Styrofoam, except for a hoof-shaped hole.
‘Oh, Styx!’ he mumbled.
Thunder rolled across the clear sky.
As he struggled to get his hoof back in the fake foot, I thought, Well, that settles it.
Grover was a satyr. I was ready to bet that if I shaved his curly brown hair, I’d find tiny horns on his head. But I was too miserable to care that satyrs existed, or even Minotaurs. All that meant was my mom really had been squeezed into nothingness, dissolved into yellow light.
I was alone. An orphan. I would have to live with… Smelly Gabe? No. That would never happen. I would live on the streets first. I would pretend I was seventeen and join the army. I’d do something.
Grover was still sniffling. The poor kid – poor goat, satyr, whatever – looked as if he expected to be hit.
I said, ‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘Yes, it was. I was supposed to protect you.’
‘Did my mother ask you to protect me?’
‘No. But that’s my job. I’m a keeper. At least… I was.’
‘But why…’ I suddenly felt dizzy, my vision swimming.
‘Don’t strain yourself,’ Grover said. ‘Here.’
He helped me hold my glass and put the straw to my lips.
I recoiled at the taste, because I was expecting apple juice. It wasn’t that at all. It was chocolate-chip cookies. Liquid cookies. And not just any cookies – my mom’s homemade blue chocolate-chip cookies, buttery and hot, with the chips still melting. Drinking it, my whole body felt warm and good, full of energy. My grief didn’t go away, but I felt as if my mom had just brushed her hand against my cheek, given me a cookie the way she used to when I was small, and told me everything was going to be okay.
Before I knew it, I’d drained the glass. I stared into it, sure I’d just had a warm drink, but the ice cubes hadn’t even melted.
‘Was it good?’ Grover asked.
I nodded.
‘What did it taste like?’ He sounded so wistful, I felt guilty.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I should’ve let you taste.’
His eyes got wide. ‘No! That’s not what I meant. I just… wondered.’
‘Chocolate-chip cookies,’ I said. ‘My mom’s. Homemade.’
He sighed. ‘And how do you feel?’
‘Like I could throw Nancy Bobofit a hundred metres.’
‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘That’s good. I don’t think you should risk drinking any more of that stuff.’
‘What do you mean?’
He took the empty glass from me gingerly, as if it were dynamite, and set it back on the table. ‘Come on. Chiron and Mr D are waiting.’
The porch wrapped all the way around the farmhouse.
My legs felt wobbly trying to walk that far. Grover offered to carry the Minotaur horn, but I held on to it. I’d paid for that souvenir the hard way. I wasn’t going to let it go.
As we came around the opposite end of the house, I caught my breath.
We must’ve been on the north shore of Long Island, because on this side of the house, the valley marched all the way up to Long Island Sound, which glittered about a mile in the distance. Between here and there, I simply couldn’t process everything I was seeing. The landscape was dotted with buildings that looked like ancient Greek architecture – an open-air pavilion, an amphitheatre, a circular arena – except that they all looked brand new, their white marble columns sparkling in the sun. In a nearby sandpit, a dozen high school-age kids and satyrs played volleyball. Canoes glided across a small lake. Kids in bright orange T-shirts like Grover’s were chasing each other around a cluster of cabins nestled in the woods. Some shot targets at an archery range. Others rode horses down a wooded trail, and, unless I was hallucinating, some of their horses had wings.
Down at the end of the porch, two men sat across from each other at a card table. The blonde-haired girl who’d spoon-fed me popcorn-flavoured pudding was leaning on the porch rail next to them.
The man facing me was small, but porky. He had a red nose, big watery eyes and curly hair so black it was almost purple. He looked like those paintings of baby angels – what do you call them, hubbubs? No, cherubs. That’s it. He looked like a cherub who’d turned middle-aged in a trailer park. He wore a tiger-pattern Hawaiian shirt, and he would’ve fitted right in at one of Gabe’s poker parties, except I got the feeling this guy could’ve out-gambled even my stepfather.
‘That’s Mr D,’ Grover murmured to me. ‘He’s the camp director. Be polite. The girl, that’s Annabeth Chase. She’s just a camper, but she’s been here longer than just about anybody. And you already know Chiron…’
He pointed at the guy whose back was to me.
First, I realized he was sitting in the wheelchair. Then I recognized the tweed jacket, the thinning brown hair, the scraggly beard.
‘Mr Brunner!’ I cried.
The Latin teacher turned and smiled at me. His eyes had that mischievous glint they sometimes got in class when he pulled a pop quiz and made all the multiple choice answers B.
‘Ah, good, Percy,’ he said. ‘Now we have four for pinochle.’
He offered me a chair to the right of Mr D, who looked at me with bloodshot eyes and heaved a great sigh. ‘Oh, I suppose I must say it. Welcome to Camp Half-Blood. There. Now don’t expect me to be glad to see you.’
‘Uh, thanks.’ I scooted a little further away from him because, if there was one thing I had learned from living with Gabe, it was how to tell when an adult has been hitting the happy juice. If Mr D was a stranger to alcohol, I was a satyr.
‘Annabeth?’ Mr Brunner called to the blonde girl.
She came forward and Mr Brunner introduced us. ‘This young lady nursed you back to health, Percy. Annabeth, my dear, why don’t you go check on Percy’s bunk? We’ll be putting him in cabin eleven for now.’
Annabeth said, ‘Sure, Chiron.’
She was probably my age, maybe a couple of centimetres taller, and a whole lot more athletic-looking. With her deep tan and her curly blonde hair, she was almost exactly what I thought a stereotypical California girl would look like, except her eyes ruined the image. They were a startling grey, like storm clouds; pretty, but intimidating, too, as if she were analysing the best way to take me down in a fight.
She glanced at the Minotaur horn in my hands, then back at me. I imagined she was going to say, You killed a Minotaur! or Wow, you’re so awesome! or something like that.
Instead she said, ‘You drool when you sleep.’
Then she sprinted off down the lawn, her blonde hair flying behind her.
‘So,’ I said, anxious to change the subject. ‘You, uh, work here, Mr Brunner?’
‘Not Mr Brunner,’ the ex-Mr Brunner said. ‘I’m afraid that was a pseudonym. You may call me Chiron.’
‘Okay.’ Totally confused, I looked at the director. ‘And Mr D… does that stand for something?’
Mr D stopped shuffling the cards. He looked at me like I’d just belched loudly. ‘Young man, names are powerful things. You don’t just go around using them for no reason.’
‘Oh. Right. Sorry.’
‘I must say, Percy,’ Chiron-Brunner broke in, ‘I’m glad to see you alive. It’s been a long time since I’ve made a house call to a potential camper. I’d hate to think I’ve wasted my time.’
‘House call?’
‘My year at Yancy Academy, to instruct you. We have satyrs at most schools, of course, keeping a lookout. But Grover alerted me as soon as he met you. He sensed you were something special, so I decided to come upstate. I convinced the other Latin teacher to… ah, take a leave of absence.’
I tried to remember the beginning of the school year. It seemed like so long ago, but I did have a fuzzy memory of there being another Latin teacher my first week at Yancy. Then, without explanation, he had disappeared and Mr Brunner had taken the class.
‘You came to Yancy just to teach me?’ I asked.
Chiron nodded. ‘Honestly, I wasn’t sure about you at first. We contacted your mother, let her know we were keeping an eye on you in case you were ready for Camp Half-Blood. But you still had so much to learn. Nevertheless, you made it here alive, and that’s always the first test.’
‘Grover,’ Mr D said impatiently, ‘are you playing or not?’
‘Yes, sir!’ Grover trembled as he took the fourth chair, though I didn’t know why he should be so afraid of a pudgy little man in a tiger-print Hawaiian shirt.
‘You do know how to play pinochle?’ Mr D eyed me suspiciously.
‘I’m afraid not,’ I said.
‘I’m afraid not, sir,’ he said.
‘Sir,’ I repeated. I was liking the camp director less and less.
‘Well,’ he told me, ‘it is, along with gladiator fighting and Pac-Man, one of the greatest games ever invented by humans. I would expect all civilized young men to know the rules.’
‘I’m sure the boy can learn,’ Chiron said.
‘Please,’ I said, ‘what is this place? What am I doing here? Mr Brun – Chiron – why would you go to Yancy Academy just to teach me?’
Mr D snorted. ‘I asked the same question.’
The camp director dealt the cards. Grover flinched every time one landed in his pile.
Chiron smiled at me sympathetically, the way he used to in Latin class, as if to let me know that no matter what my average was, I was his star student. He expected me to have the right answer.
‘Percy,’ he said. ‘Did your mother tell you nothing?’
‘She said…’ I remembered her sad eyes, looking out over the sea. ‘She told me she was afraid to send me here, even though my father had wanted her to. She said that once I was here, I probably couldn’t leave. She wanted to keep me close to her.’
‘Typical,’ Mr D said. ‘That’s how they usually get killed. Young man, are you bidding or not?’
‘What?’ I asked.
He explained, impatiently, how you bid in pinochle, and so I did.
‘I’m afraid there’s too much to tell,’ Chiron said. ‘I’m afraid our usual orientation film won’t be sufficient.’
‘Orientation film?’ I asked.
‘No,’ Chiron decided. ‘Well, Percy. You know your friend Grover is a satyr. You know –’ he pointed to the horn in the shoebox – ‘that you have killed a Minotaur. No small feat, either, lad. What you may not know is that great powers are at work in your life. Gods – the forces you call the Greek gods – are very much alive.’
I stared at the others around the table.
I waited for somebody to yell, Not! But all I got was Mr D yelling, ‘Oh, a royal marriage. Trick! Trick!’ He cackled as he tallied up his points.
‘Mr D,’ Grover asked timidly, ‘if you’re not going to eat it, could I have your Diet Coke can?’
‘Eh? Oh, all right.’
Grover bit a huge shard out of the empty aluminium can and chewed it mournfully.
‘Wait,’ I told Chiron. ‘You’re telling me there’s such a thing as God.’
‘Well, now,’ Chiron said. ‘God – capital G, God. That’s a different matter altogether. We shan’t deal with the metaphysical.’
‘Metaphysical? But you were just talking about –’
‘Ah, gods, plural, as in, great beings that control the forces of nature and human endeavours: the immortal gods of Olympus. That’s a smaller matter.’
‘Smaller!’
‘Yes, quite. The gods we discussed in Latin class.’
‘Zeus,’ I said. ‘Hera. Apollo. You mean them.’
And there it was again – distant thunder on a cloudless day.
‘Young man,’ said Mr D. ‘I would really be less casual about throwing those names around, if I were you.’
‘But they’re stories,’ I said. ‘They’re – myths, to explain lightning and the seasons and stuff. They’re what people believed before there was science.’
‘Science!’ Mr D scoffed. ‘And tell me, Perseus Jackson –’
I flinched when he said my real name, which I never told anybody.
‘– what will people think of your “science” two thousand years from now?’ Mr D continued. ‘Hmm? They will call it primitive mumbo jumbo. That’s what. Oh, I love mortals – they have absolutely no sense of perspective. They think they’ve come so˜o˜o far. And have they, Chiron? Look at this boy and tell me.’
I wasn’t liking Mr D much, but there was something about the way he called me mortal, as if… he wasn’t. It was enough to put a lump in my throat, to suggest why Grover was dutifully minding his cards, chewing his soda can, and keeping his mouth shut.
‘Percy,’ Chiron said, ‘you may choose to believe or not, but the fact is that immortal means immortal. Can you imagine that for a moment, never dying? Never fading? Existing, just as you are, for all time?’
I was about to answer, off the top of my head, that it sounded like a pretty good deal, but the tone of Chiron’s voice made me hesitate.
‘You mean, whether people believed in you or not,’ I said.
‘Exactly,’ Chiron agreed. ‘If you were a god, how would you like being called a myth, an old story to explain lightning? What if I told you, Perseus Jackson, that someday people would call you a myth, just created to explain how little boys can get over losing their mothers?’
My heart pounded. He was trying to make me angry for some reason, but I wasn’t going to let him. I said, ‘I wouldn’t like it. But I don’t believe in gods.’
‘Oh, you’d better,’ Mr D murmured. ‘Before one of them incinerates you.’
Grover said, ‘P-please, sir. He’s just lost his mother. He’s in shock.’
‘A lucky thing, too,’ Mr D grumbled, playing a card. ‘Bad enough I’m confined to this miserable job, working with boys who don’t even believe!’
He waved his hand and a goblet appeared on the table, as if the sunlight had bent, momentarily, and woven the air into glass. The goblet filled itself with red wine.
My jaw dropped, but Chiron hardly looked up.
‘Mr D,’ he warned, ‘your restrictions.’
Mr D looked at the wine and feigned surprise.
‘Dear me.’ He looked at the sky and yelled, ‘Old habits! Sorry!’
More thunder.
Mr D waved his hand again, and the wineglass changed into a fresh can of Diet Coke. He sighed unhappily, popped the top of the soda, and went back to his card game.
Chiron winked at me. ‘Mr D offended his father a while back, took a fancy to a wood nymph who had been declared off-limits.’
‘A wood nymph,’ I repeated, still staring at the Diet Coke can like it was from outer space.
‘Yes,’ Mr D confessed. ‘Father loves to punish me. The first time, Prohibition. Ghastly! Absolutely horrid ten years! The second time – well, she really was pretty, and I couldn’t stay away – the second time, he sent me here. Half-Blood Hill. Summer camp for brats like you. “Be a better influence,” he told me. “Work with youths rather than tearing them down.” Ha! Absolutely unfair.’
Mr D sounded about six years old, like a pouting little kid.
‘And…’ I stammered, ‘your father is…’
‘Di immortales, Chiron,’ Mr D said. ‘I thought you taught this boy the basics. My father is Zeus, of course.’
I ran through D names from Greek mythology. Wine. The skin of a tiger. The satyrs that all seemed to work here. The way Grover cringed, as if Mr D were his master.
‘You’re Dionysus,’ I said. ‘The god of wine.’
Mr D rolled his eyes. ‘What do they say, these days, Grover? Do the children say, “Well, duh!”?’
‘Y-yes, Mr D.’
‘Then, “Well, duh!” Percy Jackson. Did you think I was Aphrodite, perhaps?’
‘You’re a god.’
‘Yes, child.’
‘A god. You.’
He turned to look at me straight on, and I saw a kind of purplish fire in his eyes, a hint that this whiny, plump little man was only showing me the tiniest bit of his true nature. I saw visions of grape vines choking unbelievers to death, drunken warriors insane with battle lust, sailors screaming as their hands turned to flippers, their faces elongating into dolphin snouts. I knew that if I pushed him, Mr D would show me worse things. He would plant a disease in my brain that would leave me wearing a straitjacket in a rubber room for the rest of my life.
‘Would you like to test me, child?’ he said quietly.
‘No. No, sir.’
The fire died a little. He turned back to his card game. ‘I believe I win.’
‘Not quite, Mr D,’ Chiron said. He set down a straight, tallied the points, and said, ‘The game goes to me.’
I thought Mr D was going to vaporize Chiron right out of his wheelchair, but he just sighed through his nose, as if he were used to being beaten by the Latin teacher. He got up, and Grover rose, too.
‘I’m tired,’ Mr D said. ‘I believe I’ll take a nap before the sing-along tonight. But first, Grover, we need to talk, again, about your less-than-perfect performance on this assignment.’
Grover’s face beaded with sweat. ‘Y-yes, sir.’
Mr D turned to me. ‘Cabin eleven, Percy Jackson. And mind your manners.’
He swept into the farmhouse, Grover following miserably.
‘Will Grover be okay?’ I asked Chiron.
Chiron nodded, though he looked a bit troubled. ‘Old Dionysus isn’t really mad. He just hates his job. He’s been… ah, grounded, I guess you would say, and he can’t stand waiting another century before he’s allowed to go back to Olympus.’
‘Mount Olympus,’ I said. ‘You’re telling me there really is a palace there?’
‘Well now, there’s Mount Olympus in Greece. And then there’s the home of the gods, the convergence point of their powers, which did indeed used to be on Mount Olympus. It’s still called Mount Olympus, out of respect to the old ways, but the palace moves, Percy, just as the gods do.’
‘You mean the Greek gods are here? Like… in America?’
‘Well, certainly. The gods move with the heart of the West.’
‘The what?’
‘Come now, Percy. What you call “Western civilization”. Do you think it’s just an abstract concept? No, it’s a living force. A collective consciousness that has burned bright for thousands of years. The gods are part of it. You might even say they are the source of it, or at least, they are tied so tightly to it that they couldn’t possibly fade, not unless all of Western civilization were obliterated. The fire started in Greece. Then, as you well know – or as I hope you know, since you passed my course – the heart of the fire moved to Rome, and so did the gods. Oh, different names, perhaps – Jupiter for Zeus, Venus for Aphrodite, and so on – but the same forces, the same gods.’
‘And then they died.’
‘Died? No. Did the West die? The gods simply moved, to Germany, to France, to Spain, for a while. Wherever the flame was brightest, the gods were there. They spent several centuries in England. All you need to do is look at the architecture. People do not forget the gods. Every place they’ve ruled, for the last three thousand years, you can see them in paintings, in statues, on the most important buildings. And yes, Percy, of course they are now in your United States. Look at your symbol, the eagle of Zeus. Look at the statue of Prometheus in Rockefeller Center, the Greek facades of your government buildings in Washington. I defy you to find any American city where the Olympians are not prominently displayed in multiple places. Like it or not – and believe me, plenty of people weren’t very fond of Rome, either – America is now the heart of the flame. It is the great power of the West. And so Olympus is here. And we are here.’
It was all too much, especially the fact that I seemed to be included in Chiron’s we, as if I were part of some club.
‘Who are you, Chiron? Who… who am I?’
Chiron smiled. He shifted his weight as if he were going to get up out of his wheelchair, but I knew that was impossible. He was paralysed from the waist down.
‘Who are you,’ he mused. ‘Well, that’s the question we all want answered, isn’t it? But for now, we should get you a bunk in cabin eleven. There will be new friends to meet. And plenty of time for lessons tomorrow. Besides, there will be toasted marshmallows at the campfire tonight, and I simply adore them.’
And then he did rise from his wheelchair. But there was something odd about the way he did it. His blanket fell away from his legs, but the legs didn’t move. His waist kept getting longer, rising above his belt. At first, I thought he was wearing very long, white velvet underwear, but as he kept rising out of the chair, taller than any man, I realized that the velvet underwear wasn’t underwear; it was the front of an animal, muscle and sinew under coarse white fur. And the wheelchair wasn’t a chair. It was some kind of container, an enormous box on wheels, and it must’ve been magic, because there’s no way it could’ve held all of him. A leg came out, long and knobby-kneed, with a huge polished hoof. Then another front leg, then hindquarters, and then the box was empty, nothing but a metal shell with a couple of fake human legs attached.
I stared at the horse who had just sprung from the wheelchair: a huge white stallion. But where its neck should be was the upper body of my Latin teacher, smoothly grafted to the horse’s trunk.
‘What a relief the centaur said. ‘I’d been cooped up in there so long, my fetlocks had fallen asleep. Now, come, Percy Jackson. Let’s meet the other campers.’
6 I Become Supreme Lord of the Bathroom
Once I got over the fact that my Latin teacher was a horse, we had a nice tour, though I was careful not to walk behind him. I’d done pooper-scooper patrol in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade a few times, and, I’m sorry, I did not trust Chiron’s back end the way I trusted his front.
We passed the volleyball pit. Several of the campers nudged each other. One pointed to the Minotaur horn I was carrying. Another said, ‘That’s him.’
Most of the campers were older than me. Their satyr friends were bigger than Grover, all of them trotting around in orange CAMP HALF-BLOOD T-shirts, with nothing else to cover their bare shaggy hindquarters. I wasn’t normally shy, but the way they stared at me made me uncomfortable. I felt like they were expecting me to do a cartwheel or something.
I looked back at the farmhouse. It was a lot bigger than I’d realized – four storeys tall, sky blue with white trim, like an upmarket seaside resort. I was checking out the brass eagle weather vane on top when something caught my eye, a shadow in the uppermost window of the attic gable. Something had moved the curtain, just for a second, and I got the distinct impression I was being watched.
‘What’s up there?’ I asked Chiron.
He looked where I was pointing, and his smile faded. ‘Just the attic.’
‘Somebody lives there?’
‘No,’ he said with finality. ‘Not a single living thing.’
I got the feeling he was being truthful. But I was also sure something had moved that curtain.
‘Come along, Percy,’ Chiron said, his lighthearted tone now a little forced. ‘Lots to see.’
We walked through the strawberry fields, where campers were picking bushels of berries while a satyr played a tune on a reed pipe.
Chiron told me the camp grew a nice crop for export to New York restaurants and Mount Olympus. ‘It pays our expenses,’ he explained. ‘And the strawberries take almost no effort.’
He said Mr D had this effect on fruit-bearing plants: they just went crazy when he was around. It worked best with wine grapes, but Mr D was restricted from growing those, so they grew strawberries instead.
I watched the satyr playing his pipe. His music was causing lines of bugs to leave the strawberry patch in every direction, like refugees fleeing a fire. I wondered if Grover could work that kind of magic with music. I wondered if he was still inside the farmhouse, being lectured by Mr D.
‘Grover won’t get in too much trouble, will he?’ I asked Chiron. ‘I mean… he was a good protector. Really.’
Chiron sighed. He shed his tweed jacket and draped it over his horse’s back like a saddle. ‘Grover has big dreams, Percy. Perhaps bigger than are reasonable. To reach his goal, he must first demonstrate great courage by succeeding as a keeper, finding a new camper and bringing him safely to Half-Blood Hill.’
‘But he did that!’
‘I might agree with you,’ Chiron said. ‘But it is not my place to judge. Dionysus and the Council of Cloven Elders must decide. I’m afraid they might not see this assignment as a success. After all, Grover lost you in New York. Then there’s the unfortunate… ah… fate of your mother. And the fact that Grover was unconscious when you dragged him over the property line. The council might question whether this shows any courage on Grover’s part.’
I wanted to protest. None of what had happened was Grover’s fault. I also felt really, really guilty. If I hadn’t given Grover the slip at the bus station, he might not have got in trouble.
‘He’ll get a second chance, won’t he?’
Chiron winced. ‘I’m afraid that was Grover’s second chance, Percy. The council was not anxious to give him another, either, after what happened the first time, five years ago. Olympus knows, I advised him to wait longer before trying again. He’s still so small for his age…’
‘How old is he?’
‘Oh, twenty-eight.’
‘What! And he’s in sixth grade?’
‘Satyrs mature half as fast as humans, Percy. Grover has been the equivalent of a middle school student for the past six years.’
‘That’s horrible.’
‘Quite,’ Chiron agreed. ‘At any rate, Grover is a late bloomer, even by satyr standards, and not yet very accomplished at woodland magic. Alas, he was anxious to pursue his dream. Perhaps now he will find some other career…’
‘That’s not fair,’ I said. ‘What happened the first time? Was it really so bad?’
Chiron looked away quickly. ‘Let’s move along, shall we?’
But I wasn’t quite ready to let the subject drop. Something had occurred to me when Chiron talked about my mother’s fate, as if he were intentionally avoiding the word death. The beginnings of an idea – a tiny, hopeful fire – started forming in my mind.
‘Chiron,’ I said. ‘If the gods and Olympus and all that are real…’